Dr. Bui Cach Tuyen, Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and Environment, launched Vietnam’s National Strategy for Environmental Protection until 2020 and Vision toward 2030 on 12th December 2012 after it had been officially approved by the Prime Minister earlier this year. The implementation of the strategy will result in a comprehensive legal framework for environmental protection and the establishment of State environmental management agencies, the Minister stated at the launching ceremony. He thanked the Hanns Seidel Foundation for their extensive support and input in formulating the National Strategy.

The strategy is widely regarded as a milestone in Vietnam’s efforts to combine sustainable economic growth with environmental protection as to attain so called Green Growth and aims at reducing the increasing trend in environmental pollution, the degradation in natural resources and the decline in biodiversity by 2020, and at preventing and reversing these trends by 2030.

Creating environmental awareness and strengthening environmental protection is one of the main pillars of the Hanns Seidel Foundation’s work in Southeast Asia and is interlinked with the aim of sustainable economic development. In Vietnam the Hanns Seidel Foundation cooperates closely with the Dragon Research Institute on Climate Change in Can Tho and with the Institute of Strategy and Policy on Natural Resources and Environment (ISPONRE) with the aim of developing strategies to fight climate change and achieve Green Growth for a sustainable economic and social development in Vietnam.